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Over the last few years, AI assistants have been on the rise. First, as a fun feature set, now ingrained as part of our daily lives. The personal brand experience, that is, how you interact with technology and brands is rapidly transforming. But will AI assistants and voice platforms rule the space? Let’s dive in!

What do you think about the voice platform?

Me personally, I’m sort of still a skeptic. Sure, I talk to Siri more – and I can see how voice could come in handy when our hands are occupied and can’t look at a screen. Yet, it’s still in its infancy. Which, I think is the perfect time for brands to take a good hard look at the technology, where it’s headed, and how it fits into their own brandedworld.

The Current Fragmented Brand Experience with Voice

I’ve started to use voice more, talking to Siri and getting comfortable asking for certain tasks to be completed. For example, Siri is great at playing a specific song seamlessly, without any trouble.

However, ask a more detailed question and Siri will provide you with results from an internet search. From there, you must unlock your phone and begin interacting with the screen and Siri, if you choose. As voice assistants become smarter, you can envision how the screen could almost disappear completely.

Sometime in the future, I will be able to have a full conversation with Siri, in which my voice, tone, and descriptions will be interpreted and understood by providing clear, logical answers. Hopefully, I’d also be able to assign Siri tasks to handle on their own, then update me when they are completed via email or text message.

With Amy, I’m able to email her specific tasks related to managing and scheduling upcoming meetings. Just recently, I had asked her to set up a meeting, thinking she’d find dates available for the following week, but not making that clear. Instead, Amy showed real ambition, offering to book a meeting for the following day with the client.

While not the best brand experience for the client, I was able to email Amy and let her know specific days and times for the potential client meeting that may work best. Amy then sent an email to the client, apologized for the incorrect meeting day/time, and offered new times. I was pretty impressed!

As I work more with Amy, I can pinpoint where I can improve my communication with her, which will improve the brand experience with future clients when setting up appointments.

Voice Assistants in the Age of Hacking

For all of the innovative systems we are building to improve our lives and create seamless experiences and reduce stress, there is a dark side that continues to bubble up more and more. Every technological system is a threat, and as we have seen lately, the world is constantly digitally under attack.

Fear is something that all entrepreneurs face. But what makes entrepreneurs special is their ability to stop fear, even if just for a moment, to realize their dreams. Learn how to stop fear and conquer your goals. Let’s dive in!

As a kid growing up, I often used my wild imagination to dream up what the future could hold. When I’d build with my Legos, I was as confident in my abilities, building houses, towns, cities and environments in my parent’s basement. But when it came to the real world, fear would often hold me back.

Being a taller than average kid (I stood about 6 feet 5 inches in the 8th grade), everyone around me told I should play basketball. I did play and enjoyed it for the most part. What I didn’t enjoy was the hate I’d receive on and off the court due to my height.

Kids would tell me that if they were my height, they would dominate. And I was simply a “waste of height“. Ouch.

That hurt. A lot.

When I did show aggressiveness on the court, I happened to give a kid a bloody nose, or elbow them in the head. Not on purpose, but it happened because of the height difference. Then kids would say I was too aggressive.

Or that it wasn’t fair I could block their 3-point shots (one of my favorite ways to shut them up).

I couldn’t win.

But it wasn’t the kids around me necessarily being mean.

It was fear.

Fear of allowing myself to play to my full potential.

Fear of not caring what others thought. Until I learned how to stop fear, it always crept in around me, stifling my growth.

Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

As I got older, I grew into my height. I got more comfortable playing basketball and dominating. In college, I got to the point where I could shoot flat-footed 3-pointers fairly consistently (That was my secret weapon!), surprising my opponents.

It felt good to dominate. It felt good to not let fear of hurting the
other players hold me back.

And it has helped me throughout my career.

When You Face Fear, You Are Choosing to Grow

Things that we are fearful of are simply unknown. Chances are, you know someone who has been in a similar situation who could advise you along the way. When you choose to face fear, you are choosing to grow.

When I chose to leave Newport Beach, California for the unknown in Hawaii, I was facing fear. Not knowing anyone on the island, it was pretty intimidating. But it was one of the best moves I made so far in my career. I pushed myself further into the unknown, took on challenging projects, saw the world, built a strong reputation and work ethic, and helped to shape the future of the United States military.

When I chose to move from Hawaii to Chicago, again I was facing fear. Not having a big network in Chicago, I took it on as a challenge to build my network and grow personally and professionally as an entrepreneur.

As Entrepreneurs, We Face Fear Every Day.

4 Ways to Stop Fear Dead in its Tracks

1. Push Yourself Out of Your Comfort Zone

Trust me; nothing will happen if you stay where you are comfortable. Put yourself in a new city and force yourself to navigate. You’ll learn lots about yourself and discover strengths you may not have realized you had in you. When you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, you stop fear.

2. Take Action, Measure and Refine Over Time

One of the biggest hurdles that stifle an entrepreneur from launching a product/service or brand is not taking action. When you take action and measure the results, you can then refine over time. Failing fast, trial and error and refining over time are all forms that stop fear.

3. Believe in Yourself

To immediately stop fear, you must believe in yourself. No matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, it begins and ends with you. If you don’t believe in yourself, your product/service and brand, how will you get others to believe in you?

You can have the biggest, most supportive network around you, but if you don’t believe, it does no good. Believe in yourself and stop fear dead in its tracks.

4. Constantly Take in Information and Adjust Your Path Forward

No matter how intentional or meticulous your plans, life doesn’t always go the way you’d like it to. When you let fear in, it usually indicates that new information has been blocked as well.

Think of launching your product or service as a video game. You get your product completed and go live. Then, as feedback comes in, you make adjustments, learn and grow from the objections in order to move to the next level. The key is to get started, and then, to keep going even when you think you can’t go any further.

To stop fear in its tracks, seek out new information, new perspectives, and new ideas. Then, without changing your end goal, adjust your path forward.

Have I Conquered Fear Completely?

I wish I could say that I have no fear. But, that is not the case. Instead, I focus on these four ways above to combat fear, stop it from entering, and focus on taking massive action towards my dreams.

You can do this.

Stop fear dead in its tracks, too.

Enjoyed This Post? Share it With Others!

How do you stop fear? I’d love to know. Leave a comment below or connect with me on social.

UX design is the basis for why and how customers choose to interact and experience your brand. From a phone call to exploring your website, to how a live event is produced, UX design all plays a critical role in the overall brand experience. Here are 9 user experience strategies to improve the brand experience for your organization.

Definition of UX as it Relates to Brand Experience

The process of providing greater customer satisfaction and enhancing loyalty by making improvements to the ease of use, overall usability, and pleasure experienced by the customer.

1. User Research is Vital in UX

One of the most common pitfalls when it comes to entrepreneurs developing a product or service for their audience is the fact that they have not taken the time to understand what their audience actually wants. Designing a product or service in a vacuum can lead to a failed offering. Why?

Simply because the entrepreneur didn’t take the time to figure out what their potential customers want. User research is vital in user experience design. It serves as the basis for how and why a product or service is developed; to best serve the customer.

Build in a process to survey and have a beta test group of ideal users who can provide genuine feedback to you. This feedback loop will become essential to developing an experience customers want to interact with.

Remember, the user experience of your product/service/event will be imprinted into the brand experience. In other words, people will make the correlation between the experience they have interacting with your brand’s products and services with the overall impression of the brand. The two are very closely linked.

2. There is Not a Single Standard UX Process

While there may not be a unified body that can provide a rigid process to follow to develop an outstanding user experience design, one of the greatest aspects of UX is its flexibility.

Your brand and the experience you are offering are distinctive and unlike anything else. Embrace the UX design process to hone in on what makes your brand stand out. Take advantage of your brand’s uniqueness and let it shine through your user experience.

3. UX Design is a Combination of Best Practices Based on Research

With a background in design, one thing I know for certain is that design is made up of a combination of best practices based on proven research. What do I mean? If you look at architectural illustrations and start to break down the components that make up the artwork, what do you notice?

If you look at a series of architectural illustrations and start to break down the components that make up the artwork, what do you notice? You may start to see similar, if not the same objects appearing across multiple architectural renderings. You may start to notice a distinct style the artwork has and how each piece, while they may not be related, share similar aspects, objects, styles, and pieces to create a similar experience.

When you think of design a web experience, most often you start with researching what is most appealing and aligned with your brand. Then you want to survey your audience to determine if what you have chosen meets their needs as well. From there, it is an iterative, detailed process to develop a unique design and experience for your brand.

4. Attention to Detail Enhances the UX Brand Experience for the Customer

Detail matters.

Now more than ever. Across multiple online platforms, multiple mediums (print, video, audio, face to face, etc.) – details enhance the user experience and further help to develop a consistent brand experience for the customer.

When working with an online experience, small details such as an informative error message or a few descriptive words to make a process more transparent can make a significant difference to the user experience.

5. Offering a Variety of Choices Can Hinder the UX Design

When you allow this to take place, the user isn’t suddenly able to make the best decision. In fact, the opposite occurs. The user may suddenly feel overwhelmed, inundated with choices and information and a lack of understanding as to how to proceed.

By simplifying the choices and developing a transparent road map to guide the user from the starting point to the desired outcome, your brand experience not only puts the customer at ease but gives them a tangible way to follow along. A user is much more likely to get involved in a complicated process when they can see the big picture and evaluate each step along throughout the journey.

Accessibility through interfaces – long gone are the days when your brand may only have a website that can be accessed on a desktop/laptop only. In 2017, if your brand does not have the digital assets in place to provide an accessible, friendly user experience across multiple devices, there is a major flaw in how your brand is communicating to its’ audience.

Accessibility to information – this refers to account information a customer may have given to a brand. Think Domino’s Pizza, Starbucks, or even Facebook. Customers of these brands have agreed to sign up and provide their information to these brands. In return, they receive a physical product (pizza or coffee), or access to connect with others around the world. In doing so, the brand’s have allowed the customer to log in and access their information 24/7 without interruption (sans an internet outage).

Both of these types of accessibility play into the user experience and, on a larger level the brand experience.

7. Usability Testing is Fundamental to a Successful UX Design

The first strategy mentioned in this list was to include user feedback into the development of your user experience. Once you have developed the user experience for your product, service, event, or website, the next step is to have users test the experience and provide feedback. This is different from collecting information from users as you develop the experience.

Usability testing allows users to fully interact and engage with your product (i.e. membership site) and provide feedback as far as bugs, missing features, poor design, or missing functionality. By putting this component into your project timeline, it will help to iterate faster and get a product out to your audience that they will love that much more.

Allowing your best customers to provide feedback is also an experience in and of itself. By allowing them to peek behind the curtain, your brand builds trust, can feel more authentic, and create a deeper sense of appreciation for the brand. Plus, people like to feel helpful. If they can provide an insight that helps a brand develop a better product, they will be happy to share that story with others, which is free, positive exposure for the brand. A win-win!

Plus, people like to feel helpful. If they can provide an insight that helps a brand develop a better product, they will be happy to share that story with others, which is free, positive exposure for the brand. A win-win!

8. UX Plays a Role in Designing the Brand Experience

With the previous seven strategies, you may have noticed a theme. That theme is that UX design plays a big role in designing the brand experience. The two are intertwined, one not far off from the other. There is even some overlap, though both each has distinctive qualities.

How a brand is perceived is based, in part to how their product or service’s experience is delivered. If for example, you order from Amazon.com quite often, the overall brand experience will be perceived by how quickly Amazon is able to ship your orders to you.

Amazon’s brand experience is made up of its’ groundwork (vision, brand promise, mission, core values, and guiding principles), how it performs (usability of its’ site and shipping orders), and how its customers perceive the brand.

9. UX, Like Brand Experience, Should be Applied Across Your Organization

We know that the brand experience exists throughout your organization, in every internal and external interaction. UX design should be applied in the same manner. Internally, how do your employees interact with company resources? Is there a common intranet that everyone uses? Does one exist that no one uses? There may be an opportunity to redesign the intranet to develop a simple to use, easy to navigate user experience, which could spur more engagement, interaction, and brainstorms from your team members.

On top of that, your brand could study how employees interact with certain aspects of design on a site and compare that to how users/customers act with the same design. This could provide incredible insights into developing a UX design customized to your brand’s audience’s specific needs.

Enjoyed This Post? Share it With Others!

How do you use UX design to develop exceptional brand experiences? Where do you get stuck? Let me know in the comments or through social media.

Special Announcement

Why I Created the Brand Experience Podcast

I’ve dreamt about it for years. I’ve spent countless hours developing plans, brainstorming, recording, going through iteration after iteration to create a podcast that I can be proud of. One that will I can grow with and help shape the future of BrandedWorld while delivering value to you, the listener.

I’ve been a huge fan of podcasts for the past several years. I have several favorites, which I’ve written about before and which I’ll be writing about more in the future. When I set out to create this podcast, my focus was on the brand experience the listener would have. Because of this, I developed specific criteria for each podcast episode to ensure that I would deliver the most value to my listeners. While these criteria may evolve in the future, they are the baseline for the creation of the podcast:

Podcast episodes to be approximately 20 minutes in length

Each podcast episode would have a bonus that can be downloaded to
extend the learning and apply the strategies discussed

Each episode must deliver actionable strategies that could be
implemented/adapted into a listener’s brand

Each topic should be tied back to the brand experience

Podcast Episodes to be Approximately 20 Minutes in Length

After listening to hundreds of podcast episodes, it became apparent that the ideal length is approximately 20 minutes. This is long enough to hold a listener’s attention, deliver great value, and not take up too much time.

Each Episode Would have a Bonus that can be Downloaded to Extend Learning

I love podcasts that deliver awesome training and insights. The podcasts that stand out to me are the ones that go the extra mile and offer free downloads to extend learning, add value, and allow the listener to take action on what they just heard.

When I set out to create the Brand Experience Podcast, having bonus content available to download was one of my top criteria. With each episode, you can download bonus content, available to ToolKit members in the dashboard.

Each Episode Must Deliver Actionable Strategies That Can Be Implemented

I love listening to podcasts of all varieties. For certain types of podcasts, such as ones that involve business strategy and training, I want to be able to come away from the episode with something tangible that I can implement in my own business. So, along with providing bonus content, a tangible PDF download, I’ve made it a goal to deliver action-packed strategies that you can take advantage of to build your unshakable brand.

Each Topic Should be Tied Back to the Brand Experience

I love to research a wide variety of topics that relate back to developing a memorable and scalable brand experience for the customer. This podcast will explore wide-ranging topics from the brand experience perspective. Look for guests from all walks of life all over the world in all different industries as we discuss the brand experience.

We’ve decided to rename our blog from Orbit to BX Blog. I’ll share the backstory behind the name Orbit and the decisions behind the name change. Still the same valuable information, now with a more aligned name. Let’s get started!

When I first launched this site back in 2014, it was a way to document my ideas, research, and opinions. I knew I wanted to name the blog something, I just wasn’t sure what. As I was developing the BrandedWorld brand, it began to take on a space theme. A BrandedWorld Organization simply isn’t just another business or brand, it’s a world of its own. Thus, the reason for a planet in the logo. The idea for the name Orbit, then was that when all 7 Axioms are synced and aligned, they are in orbit, circling the planet. Therefore, the name Orbit was given to the blog as a way to help readers build their brands and improve their Axioms for a smoother orbit.

While I like the name, it just wasn’t connecting. When I’d mention it, it was somewhat confusing. The last thing I want the BrandedWorld brand to convey is confusion – it’d be going against everything I teach and consult on.

A New Name is Born

As I have been researching the customer journey, user interfaces, user experiences, and designing experiences, I began to see a common language of hashtags and shorthand within the community. I also realized that what I have been researching, writing, and speaking about resonates with the user experience, user interface, and customer experience communities.

Then, it hit me. Seeing #ux, #ui, #cx, I made a simple connection: #bx for brand experience. It is what I talk about, write about, read about, speak about all the time. Brand strategy, operational performance, along with the 7 Axioms all fit in or under the topic ‘brand experience.‘ Even better, it’s a simple, short hashtag to define the space I am in; #bx.

The Product Development Road Map

I’ve been hard at work building several products that will launch throughout 2017. My goal with this website is to become the number one trusted authority on the web for entrepreneurs around the world for brand strategy, development, and brand experience. To do this, my model is to build out the website to become a massive, multimedia resource. There are five free types of content that will be produced and scaled up throughout 2017.

BX Blog (Previously Orbit)

The first product was the blog, now BX, previously Orbit. The blog shares relevant, up to date, actionable and thought-provoking content surrounding brand development and brand experiences. New content is published currently three times a week (M, W, F) and now has over 120 articles.

Trajectory Newsletter

The next product was the Trajectory Newsletter. The newsletter is delivered each Thursday and covers three major areas: curated brand strategy content, community updates, and helpful resources.

ToolKit

Just over two weeks ago, I launched ToolKit, the third product that ties both the blog and newsletter together. Access to this ever-growing collection of branding resources including templates, worksheets, and checklists for download, plus in-depth guides updated each month is completely free.

The fourth and fifth products are still under wraps but will include BX in their names to further align with the blog. While I don’t want to delve into the details, they will be in the media space. Needless to say, I am excited to get these projects off the ground and share them with you!

Near Term Future Developments

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing information about latest our upcoming product launch. I’m super excited to share it with you and know that it will provide you the training, tools, resources, guidance and support in your pursuit of developing an unshakable brand.

What’s Your Take?

Do you agree or disagree with the name change of the blog? Let me know in the comments below. Be on the lookout for the #bx hashtag across social media. Feel free to start using it and expanding on the brand experience discussion!